A federal appeals court has wisely blocked an attempt by Fox to cut off customer access to a DISH Network service that skips TV commercials, saying the Fox legal argument was not strong enough to issue a preliminary injunction in the case. The Ninth Circuit upheld the district court’s ruling that plaintiffs would be unlikely to succeed on their claims of both direct copyright infringement and secondary copyright infringement, and also breach of contract.
“The narrow view of fair use the plaintiffs were advocating would have crushed innovations from DVR technology to a wide range of new private copying technologies. We are glad to see the court examine this issue and recognize the inappropriateness of using allegations of copyright violations to try to protect an old business model rather than meet the challenge to innovate and compete.”
For more background on this case, please see CCIA Public Policy & Regulatory Counsel Ali Sternburg’s blog post for DisCo: